University of Georgia
Ocmulgee Ecological Forecasting II
A River in Time

[DEVELOP Intro Clip]
[music starts]
[title card]
[Team photo]
[Picture of team with partners] 
[Video of meeting with partners]

>> CHRISTOPHER SEAN CAMERON: The Ocmulgee Ecological Forecasting team at the University 
of Georgia partnered with The Georgia Department of Natural Resources to conduct a land 
cover change study with the goal of predicting future land use trends in the Ocmulgee River 
valley with a focus on increasing urbanization and development.

[Video of meeting with partners]
[map to establish location of study site followed by series of videos taken by drones] 
[Video panning from the top of the river to the bottom to represent the flow of the study area]

>> CHRISTOPHER SEAN CAMERON: The river flows for 180 miles starting just south of the city of 
Atlanta, running until it joins the Oconee River to form the Altamaha. 

[specific footage of mounds]

>> CHRISTOPHER SEAN CAMERON: The Ocmulgee River corridor is a vital natural resource and 
is historically significant to Georgia, featuring Native American mound structures and 
an occupation history extending back 15,000 years. 

[photos of local wildlife focusing on wildlife mentioned]

>> ZHAN SHI: The Ocmulgee River corridor serves as a unique and diverse habitat for many 
different animal species- including migratory birds and one of Georgia’s three documented 
black bear populations. The federally protected endangered Atlantic sturgeon and American 
shad also call the Ocmulgee home. 

[videos and pictures showing examples of urban encroachment]

>> ZAHN SHI: The primary concern for this study area is habitat fragmentation due to 
increasing urbanization.

[picture of Landsat 8 and videos of team meetings]

>> AYN REMILLARD: To examine increasing urbanization and future impacts on the Ocmulgee 
river corridor we obtained freely available Landsat 8 imagery for the year 2014. Landsat 8 
is NASA’s eighth satellite in the Landsat series which allows us to understand what is 
going on, on the surface of the earth. This data can then be used to determine land cover 
conditions, changes, and even make future predictions. 

[graphics simplifying the classification process-Sean’s visual demonstration]

>> AYN REMILLARD: Using a supervised classification technique, our team updated the 
National Land Cover Dataset for the Ocmulgee River Valley using the most recent 
Landsat 8 imagery. One of the benefits of the supervised technique is that the user 
defines areas of interest for each land cover type. The user can further train the 
classification algorithm to identify pixels with a specific multispectral 
signature that is associated with a type of land cover.

>> AYN REMILLARD: This type of classification gives the user control over selecting 
representative samples for each land cover class of interest. These sample land cover 
classes are known as “training sets”. The training set allows the algorithm to classify 
the land cover based on the spectral signatures of the selected samples. 

[graphics of our final updated land cover dataset]

>> ANDREW HERRING: Our results were then used to analyze land cover changes over time by comparing 
our Landsat-based classification with existing, historic datasets for the Ocmulgee River corridor.
This can then be used to forecast future land use changes and assess ecological impacts. 

[graphics showing ecological forecasting]

>> CHRISTOPHER SEAN CAMERON: As expected, in recent years major urban areas, such as macon, are showing 
a major increase in urbanization and overall there has been a decrease in deciduous and evergreen forests 
along the Ocmulgee river corridor. 

[final series of video clips and pictures]

>> CHRISTOPHER SEAN CAMERON: We hope the results of this project will provide more robust and recent 
datasets to help the Georgia Department of Natural Resources with the protection and conservation of 
Georgia’s resources for future generations to come.

[credits]
[end music]
[DEVELOP Standard Ending]